Print ArticleWashington, D.C. — Political and humanitarian crises in Somalia are worsening and taking on a global significance the international community must address, argues a strategy paper, Somalia: A Country in Peril, A Policy Nightmare, released today by the Enough Project.
Ken Menkhaus, Davidson College (N.C.) professor and author of the report, notes that, while the bloody civil war over control of Somalia has been raging since 1991, in the past few years "seismic political, social, and security changes are occurring in the country, and none bode well for the people of Somalia or the international community." The paper looks at political collapse, interference by Ethiopian and Eritrean troops supporting different factions, clan warfare, population displacement and suffering, growing anti-American and anti-Western sentiment, and other elements of the crisis in the context of what Mr. Menkhaus terms "shipwrecked" international policies and 3.5 million Somalis at risk of famine.
"After eighteen years of steady crisis, it would be a dangerous error of judgment to brush off Somalia´s current crisis as more of the same," said Enough Project Policy Advisor Colin Thomas-Jensen in releasing the report at a panel discussion of the complex patterns of international, regional, and local dynamics that have impacted Somalia.
Joining Mr. Menkhaus, an expert in the Horn of Africa and former political advisor to the UN Operation in Somalia, on the panel were Chris Albin-Lackey, Senior Researcher in the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch, and Howard Wolpe, Director of Africa Programs at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., where the panel discussion took place.
Ken Menkhaus, Davidson College (N.C.) professor and author of the report, notes that, while the bloody civil war over control of Somalia has been raging since 1991, in the past few years "seismic political, social, and security changes are occurring in the country, and none bode well for the people of Somalia or the international community." The paper looks at political collapse, interference by Ethiopian and Eritrean troops supporting different factions, clan warfare, population displacement and suffering, growing anti-American and anti-Western sentiment, and other elements of the crisis in the context of what Mr. Menkhaus terms "shipwrecked" international policies and 3.5 million Somalis at risk of famine.
"After eighteen years of steady crisis, it would be a dangerous error of judgment to brush off Somalia´s current crisis as more of the same," said Enough Project Policy Advisor Colin Thomas-Jensen in releasing the report at a panel discussion of the complex patterns of international, regional, and local dynamics that have impacted Somalia.
Joining Mr. Menkhaus, an expert in the Horn of Africa and former political advisor to the UN Operation in Somalia, on the panel were Chris Albin-Lackey, Senior Researcher in the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch, and Howard Wolpe, Director of Africa Programs at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., where the panel discussion took place.
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